


you'll never beat (but you'll never break)

by ArsenicInYourPudding



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Gen, Ronan Lynch & Blue Sargent Friendship, Sickfic, fever dreams really suck when you pull shit with you into the waking world anyway, mentions of adam and gansey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-04
Updated: 2015-11-04
Packaged: 2018-04-29 20:31:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5141549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArsenicInYourPudding/pseuds/ArsenicInYourPudding
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ronan gets sick. Contrary to popular belief, he actually Does need a babysitter. </p><p>(or, Blue finds out what really made that scar on Ronan's arm, and they Talk About Things, but only because Ronan's sick, damnit.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	you'll never beat (but you'll never break)

**Author's Note:**

> haha, this is actually like. the third sick!fic i've written this week. i've been struck with a desire to make other people suffer with me, i guess. 
> 
> any character weirdness or grammatical inconsistencies should be chalked up to the unbeta'd nature of the fic and my own lingering illness, please and thank you.

Noah had called at 7:30 that morning.

Being dead, Noah didn’t call anyone all that often to begin with, so in itself the communication was novel, even if at an obscene hour. Orla had woken Blue with an unceremonious “That one dead kid is hogging the line, get up and make him leave,” and once consciousness had kicked in and understanding of what her cousin had said came with it, Blue found herself hurtling out of bed toward the phone room.

“Are you busy,” Noah had asked, and somehow managed to sound simultaneously guileless and completely terrified.

“No, it’s Saturday. Why do you ask?”

Noah had paused, cleared his throat awkwardly, and said, “You need to come stay with Ronan.”

The ensuing argument had largely consisted of Blue demanding to know up front what she was walking into, and Noah maintaining his frustratingly vague insistence that something was wrong, and that something was not a thing that could be spoken aloud over the phone, and there was absolutely for sure no one else who was less inclined to kill Ronan and could possibly be contacted to come deal with it. At last, Blue had huffed and reluctantly agreed to bike over, just give her ten minutes to get dressed, god, do you have any idea how early it is?

The ride to Monmouth was hatefully sunny in an early spring sort of way, where the sun was providing way too much light and nothing else in the way of heat. Blue bundled herself into an old hoodie embroidered with bird patches in all manner of patterned fabric, and biked over to the factory rehearsing her best _Goddamnit Ronan, Get Your Shit Together_ speech under her breath in the chilly morning air.

The door was unlocked, but Noah was nowhere to be found when she dragged her bike inside and propped it up against the brick wall just inside the door. “Noah,” Blue called, ambling toward the stairs and looking curiously around ancient industrial debris as if she’d been drawn unwittingly into a game of Hide and Seek. He didn’t surface on the ground floor, nor did he on the second - in fact, the whole building seemed deserted entirely. No Noah, and definitely no Ronan. She had a vague recollection that Gansey was home for the weekend, and Adam was working, which was probably why Noah had called her and not one of them. “Hello,” she called again, picking her way through a hurricane of laundry strewn across the floor at the foot of Gansey’s bed.

“You’re _here_ ,” Noah breathed just behind her, and Blue jumped with a small, undignified yelp.

“ _Christ_ , don’t _do_ that,” she reprimanded, turning to smack him in the chest. It felt like swiping her hand through thick paint, or half-set jello. “You’ll give me a heart attack!”

“Sorry,” he said sheepishly, ducking his head a little. The smudge on his cheek appeared to change colors from a dusty, yellowed purple to a faded olive as he moved.

Blue straightened her hoodie and nodded her forgiveness briskly. “What’s so terrible you couldn’t tell me on the phone?”

Noah wrung his hands in front of his stomach. “Ronan’s sick.”

“...He’s sick.”

Noah nodded.

“Oh, for _god’s_ sake,” she snapped, crossing her arms. “I’m not a _nanny_ , you know, just because I’m a woman doesn’t mean I have some sort of natural healing and nurturing capability, and if Ronan can’t fucking take care of _himself--_ ”

“You don’t _understand_ ,” Noah insisted, grabbing for her hand. He solidified almost instantly, still ice cold against her bare skin. “He’s _sick_. He has a fever.” Blue stared at him, waiting for the punchline, and he raised his eyebrows meaningfully. “Fever dreams?”

“...Oh.” Blue shrugged off her hoodie and tossed it on Gansey’s desk chair. She had a minimal idea of what exactly it was that made Ronan dreaming so dangerous, but she figured that Noah might just want some kind of backup. She looked around. “But. There’s no one here but you, and he can’t _hurt_ you.”

Noah shook his head emphatically. “I’m not worried about _me_ , Blue. I’m worried about _Ronan_.”

“...Would something he made really hurt him?”

“Has before,” Noah said solemnly, and Blue suppressed a shiver and dragged her hoodie back on. “He’s in his room.” Blue raised an eyebrow at him, and Noah shrugged. “He kicked me out last night. Said I was being creepy.”

“Watching people sleep _is_ creepy,” Blue agreed, “whether they’re sick or not.” She picked her way across the room to Ronan’s door and knocked. “Ronan? It’s Blue, can I come in?”

There was no response, and the door was locked when Blue tried the handle. Noah’s arm pressed against her shoulder, and when she turned, he wordlessly passed her a small key. “I don’t even want to know,” she muttered, fitting the key into the lock.

The inside of Ronan’s room felt familiar, even though Blue could count the number of times she’d seen past the door on one hand. It seemed to suit him, the specific clutter seeming like an existential reflection of the one who put it there. The one, Blue presumed, to be at the center of the blanket burrito on the bed. “Ronan,” she said, crossing the room carefully.

Slowly, the blankets moved, and a pallid, shaved head peeked out. “Go away,” Ronan muttered resentfully, voice muffled by blankets and what sounded like a cold in full swing. Blue blinked at him, and sat down on the end of his bed. He made a sluggish effort at kicking her, hampered by the pile of blankets and his own lethargy.

“Oh, stop. Noah’s worried,” Blue said flatly. “So until he’s not, or there’s someone else to be in charge, I’m staying.”

Blue had expected him to say something rude about Noah’s propensity for worrying about them, or something targeted and offensive to piss her off into reconsidering. Instead, Ronan slumped into his pillows, rubbing pensively at his wrist tucked up near his face. His leather bands were laying on the table next to the door, the top of a pile that included his car keys and a mountain of likely unfinished homework. Some discoloration on Ronan’s wrist caught her eye, and Blue leaned forward to get to a better angle.

It was a scar, an inch and a half long and puckered a shiny almost-pink. Blue bit her lip. “Is that what Noah’s afraid of,” she asked quietly.

Ronan heaved an exhausted sigh and wormed his arm out from under the blankets to extend toward her. She stared at it, and he shot her an irritable look. “You want to look so bad,” he griped, and Blue very gingerly took his wrist between her fingers.

He was definitely running a high fever, that much was obvious just by touching the skin of his forearm. A thin sheen of sweat clung to him as Blue trailed her fingers over the scar. “It almost...” Blue bit her lip and stopped herself.

“Spit it out,” Ronan muttered, shifting so he wasn’t twisted around while she inspected his arm.

Blue looked at him, looked back at the scar, and took a deep breath. “It almost looks... self-inflicted,” she said softly, glancing back up at his face.

Ronan sighed again. “In a way,” he said vaguely.

All at once, the pieces shuffled into place - the scar, Noah’s fears, Ronan’s own odd reticence regarding his capabilities. “A...nightmare,” Blue tried, and Ronan only hesitated a second or two before nodding. “That _sucks_ ,” Blue grimaced.

Inexplicably, Ronan smiled, small and grateful. “Yeah, it does.”

Blue chewed on her lower lip for a second. “Has it, you know. Happened again?”

Ronan shrugged. “Cuts and bruises, mostly. Nothing like this.” He squirmed back under the blankets, knees curling up around her other side.

“Still.” Blue kicked off her sneakers and nudged the approximate vicinity of Ronan’s chest. “Scoot over.” His face scrunched up at her, confused and scowling, and she rolled her eyes. “I’m serious, if you’re gonna get over this, you have to sleep it off. And since apparently that’s a safety issue, I’m gonna stick close, okay?”

“You have no idea what I can bring back with me, you’re not--”

Blue shoved him over and settled down next to him. “Ronan? Don’t be dumb.”

He fell silent for a few seconds. “You don’t mind?”

“Nah. Sleep is important.” Blue squirmed into the mattress - surprisingly warm and comfortable, but that was Ronan for you, she supposed - and turned to face him. “I dunno if you’re like, secretly a cuddler, or--”

“Fuck off,” Ronan grumbled, shoving his face into his pillow. Blue grinned at him and scrubbed her fingertips over the top of his head. “You’re just as bad as Noah.”

Blue’s grin only widened. “False,” she chirped. “I am _so_ much worse.”

* * *

Ronan woke up with one hand cradled in both of Blue’s. It was only inches from her face, cradled amid the nest of blankets and pillows. “You tryin’ to read my palm, or what,” he mumbled, sleep-heavy and full-headed.

“Not really my forte,” Blue answered absently. “Orla reads palms, though. And my mom. Calla won’t anymore, but she used to.”

“...Huh,” Ronan managed. Blue traced the scar on his wrist with two fingers, and for a while, silence was the only real presence in the room. Ronan blinked heavily at their hands. “Gansey thought I tried to kill myself,” he said after a while.

Blue’s eyes snapped up to him. “Yeah,” she asked carefully, and her fingers dropped away from the scar. Her other hand still cradled the back of his.

Ronan hummed in affirmation and pulled the blankets up over his shoulders. He was still freezing, and he ached like he’d picked a fight with a gorilla and lost. “Noah was the one who found me first, and then he went and got Gansey, who called 911. But yeah, he thought I’d done it on purpose for like, a year. Until the whole Greywaren thing.”

“...I thought you didn’t lie to people.”

Another ache tightened underneath the physical one, bone deep and sorrowful. “I don’t,” he said quietly. “I didn’t _tell him_ I’d attempted suicide. I just...didn’t correct him. Them. Anyone.”

Blue gave him a dry look. “A lie of omission is still a lie.”

Ronan squirmed, and didn’t say anything.

Carefully, Blue smudged her thumb across the scar, her expression unreadable. “Have you ever wanted to? Kill yourself, I mean.”

“Is this some sort of unsubtle way of asking if I’m suicidal now, or--”

“No,” Blue interrupted, rolling her eyes. “Kill yourself or don’t, really not my business.”

The pair fell silent again, before Ronan sighed, rubbed at his face with his free hand, and chewed his lip for a moment. “Once,” he admitted. “After my dad died. Didn’t actually try anything, but I wanted to.” Blue nodded mutely, still staring at his hand. “You?”

Blue took one slow breath, then two, then three, then four. The silence stretched long enough to tell Ronan he probably wasn’t going to like the answer. “Not seriously,” she said finally. “Just like, my mom’s eventually going to... And even if she doesn’t anytime soon, I’m not psychic, I can’t justify hanging around my house for the rest of my life, and if my options boil down to working two or three dead-end jobs just to make ends meet on my own, or marrying someone I can’t stand so I don’t run the risk of killing him and just stay pregnant until I hit menopause, and my chances of escaping Henrietta are slim _anyway_ , maybe I could just, like. Take the third door, so to speak.” She sighed heavily and shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t know. It’s an option, I guess.”

It was probably just the fever talking, but something about her tone cranked a yawning sadness open inside Ronan’s chest. “That’s a bleak assessment,” he said, in lieu of what he wanted to say.

“Yeah, well.” Blue let go of his hand and rolled onto her back, blinking up at the ceiling.

“...It’s not an option, you know,” Ronan said after a while. Blue turned her head to look at him, eyebrows raised toward the wall over their heads. “It’s not. Believe me, you think Gansey’s weird and overprotective _now_ , just you wait until you wake up in the hospital.”

Blue’s lips tilted in a sad little smile. “You do know if Gansey actually does die, your argument goes out the window.”

“There’s enough Gansey in the rest of us to make your life hell,” Ronan promised her. “It was so uncomfortable, though. Like, you don’t ever want to do that. He’s so... _sad_ . And guilty-looking. And he just, like. Clings to you. Voice of experience says don’t do it. _So_ not worth it.”

A short, thready laugh escaped into the space between them, and Blue turned back toward him smiling. “Aww, I love you too,” she teased.

Ronan squirmed in his blanket nest. “...Gansey said the same thing.”

Blue went quiet, exhaling slowly. “You know he meant it,” she said carefully, threading her fingers into his hand again. “Against our better judgement, we all love you.”

For once, his usual biting sarcasm failed to rise to the bait. Instead, Ronan worked an arm out from under the blankets and draped it over Blue’s waist, pulling her into a hesitant hug. Blue went willingly, squashing the piles of fluffy comforters and fleece blankets between them and ducking down so her forehead was against his collarbone and he could rest his chin on top of her hair. One small hand stroked down his upper arm, from the ball of his shoulder to just before his elbow. It was the most physical contact he’d had with anyone since he’d pulled Matthew into a good-natured headlock in the St. Agnes parking lot a week prior, and it filled an empty space inside him that he hadn’t even known was there.

After a few minutes, Blue shifted under his arm. “You know,” she said, her voice muffled slightly and colored with a wicked smile, “I’m a fan of this newfound cuddly streak of yours. You should get sick more often.”

“Hah. Joke’s on you,” Ronan said, hugging her tighter, “I’m just trying to contaminate you with whatever I’ve got.”

“Ugh, the _one_ time Ronan learns to share,” Blue complained, but didn’t move to fight her way out. “Fine, whatever, I could use a day home from school.”

Ronan snickered. “Skipping school, what _would_ Gansey say?”

“You’re the voice of experience, you tell me,” Blue shot back.

“Actually, probably nothing. Doesn’t say a word, just shakes his head in disappointment at you.” Ronan shivered, although whether that was his fever, or the thought of Gansey’s shattered expectations, was anyone’s guess.

Blue pulled the blankets back up around Ronan’s shoulder. “Can I say something, and have you take it seriously?”

Considering where the conversation had been, some part of Ronan tensed in uneasy anticipation. “No promises,” he said, trying for arrogant disregard and only managing to sound nervous.

She rolled her eyes. “You don’t need to sit here and suffer until Noah freaks out enough to call someone. I know you get worried about bringing stuff back with you - I can keep watch anytime. Just _ask_ , would you? Or have him ask, since you seem to be allergic to your phone.” 

Ronan blinked at her. The only reason his eyes were stinging was because he was _sick_ , damnit, and sleeping poorly. Instinctively, he leaned forward and brushed his lips against Blue’s cheek. “You’re alright, I guess,” he said quietly, burrowing into the blankets up to his nose.

Blue smiled and wrapped her arm over the mound of blankets on top of him. “You’re a dick,” she told him, chuckling under her breath. “Doesn’t mean we don’t care about you.”

He cleared his throat awkwardly, turning his face down into the folds between them. “You know,” he started, and paused, trying to figure out what he wanted to say next. “If you ever just, you know. Need to get out of your head for an hour or two--”

“I’d call you,” Blue promised. She squirmed up higher on the pillows and pressed her lips to his cheek. “Thanks, Ronan.”

“I’d teach you how to drag race.”

Blue snorted. “Ah, no.”

“I think you’d be good at it. Besides, I’ve been looking for an excuse to have Adam poke around under the hood.”

“Oh, _I_ get it. This is just a ploy for you to get the object of your lust shirtless and covered in grease. Well, I guess I can appreciate _that_.”

Ronan narrowed his eyes critically. “I thought you didn’t have a thing for him anymore?”

“Emotionally? Absolutely not - probably never did, really. But _aesthetically_ ? Oh, hell yeah.” She waved a hand in the air above them. “I don’t know if you know this, but you’re _all_ attractive. It’s kind of offensive - I mean, until you open your mouths, and then the illusion’s broken, but you know what I mean.”

Ronan laughed, a little exhausted and rough with the promise of losing his voice. They settled into silence for a minute, both too warm and comfortable to keep the conversation going. After a while, he raised an eyebrow at her. “We’re not friends.”

“Oh, of course not.”

“This doesn’t mean anything.”

Blue hummed in agreement. One hand came up to rest against his forehead. “I think your fever’s going down,” she said, offhand.

Ronan curled a little tighter into the blankets. “You wanna stay anyway?”

Blue smiled.

 


End file.
